Weekly Photo Challenge: Dialogue

This week’s photo challenge is dialogue – bringing together two pictures that tell a story. Host Frédéric Biver said:

Dialogue is an engaging conversational exchange.

When it comes to photography, dialogue can be perceived as a consensual interaction between two images.

Placed next to each other, each photograph opens up to meanings that weren’t there when viewed alone.

Each composition reveals the photographer’s specific sensitivity to certain content or visual elements.

These pictures were taken at my daughter’s house less than 24 hours apart. We couldn’t figure out why the spider was so huge – her gut was just swollen! We thought she must have eaten hearty shortly before my daughter pointed her out to me. I took pictures of her and her egg sac that was not even a foot away from the web.

Ha! The next day she was considerably thinner and now there were TWO eggs sacs.

I pointed out that the argiope aurantia (corn spiders) are not very aggressive to people but are quite carnivorous. I suggested my daughter leave it alone to eat the flies and mosquitoes. Although my daughter would have preferred no spiders in her tomato plants, once the egg sacs released the babies, my daughter got busy catching and moving the spiders around the landscaping. Not getting tangled in the webs has been more of a challenge, but it seems the spiders have helped with the flies.

I also got some great pictures of the argiope moving around her web. At one point, an insect flew into her web and she ran right over to kill it and wrap it up. I mean fast – I probably couldn’t have even counted to ten had I not stood there, slack-jawed at watching her in action. By the way – the photographer can also move really fast when she’s standing practically on top of a spider that decides to start racing around. I’m surprised I didn’t fall on my butt from jumping backwards! I will post more pictures a different day of the ariope in action.

WIth the mosquitoes being so bad – I’m detouring around webs so as not to disturb.
DId you see that news last week that researchers found spiders in cities were larger than those of the same species in rural areas? Weird!

That’s a surprise. You’d think the rural areas have better hunting grounds, making for better nourished spiders. We had huge spiders in Omaha – the black furry garden variety ones. They came up through the drains and they were fast! They see us coming and run off. Each August, we had the biggest and healthiest harvestmen (Daddy long legs) hatch somewhere under our kitchen and they would overrun the kitchen and laundry room. We were constantly catching them in a glass and putting them outside.

I’m glad I didn’t fall too, because I really jumped. My lens was just inches from her when she went tearing off after that bug. She’d already warned me once by clacking her fangs, so I was leery of being so close. I didn’t think she’d do anything to me, but why take a chance? I’m surprised we don’t have more spiders around here as fall starts to set in. When we lived in the Midwest, there would be webs and spiders everywhere at this time of the year.